Resurrection Eggs Recap

Back in March I came up with a plan for my own version of Resurrection Eggs to help Aria grasp the meaning of Easter more clearly.  I made my plan similar to what we did last year.  I wanted to tell more than the Easter story; to focus on Jesus' life on earth.  My goal was to help Aria understand her Savior beyond His death.  After completing all of our reading and activities, I think Aria has a good four year old grasp of who Jesus is.  She understands a little about Jesus' time on earth and what he did while he was here.  We read the Bible so often that she knows so many of the stories very well.  So note to self, next year I want to go back to focusing on the story of Jesus' death and resurrection around Easter.  We can go into more detail and deepen her specific knowledge of those weeks.

Back to this year.  I came up with 20 eggs.  Each egg had a Bible verse and an object clue.  We started with Jesus' birth and ended with the Holy Spirit coming.  My goal was to read from the Bible every day and do some sort of craft or activity to connect to what we read.  Aria loves doing crafts and they are great physical reminders of what she learned.  She also loves to act things out, which definitely helps plant the story in her mind.

One thing that came of our eggs this year was Aria learning how to read verse references.  We talked about Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John being the Gospel and the books that tell about Jesus' life.  She learned how to read the number references for the chapter and verse, too.  We read the verses from my Bible every day.  Sometimes we read the story from one of her storybook Bibles, too.  Here is my list:

1. John 3:16 and the story of Jesus' birth.  We made a star like the one over Bethlehem when Jesus was born.

2. Luke 2:49.  The story of Jesus as a boy in the temple.  We built a temple out of toothpicks and marshmallows.

3. Matthew 3:16-17. Jesus' baptism.  We made stick people Jesus and John and acted out the baptism with some gold glitter and a dove.

4. Matthew 4:19.  Jesus calls his disciples.  We made 12 notes for friends and family to tell them Jesus loves them like the disciples did.

5. Matthew 6:9-13. Jesus teaches how to pray.  My goal was to learn the Lord's prayer, but Aria was not interested so it didn't stick.

6. John 9:11. Jesus heals a blind man.  We acted it out like this:

7. Mark 11:7-10. Palm Sunday.  We made palm branches and acted out Jesus' triumphant entry to Jerusalem.

8. Matthew 26:14-16. Judas agrees to betray Jesus.  My original idea was to find a place to give our money to do the opposite of what Judas did when he accepted money to betray Jesus, but we ended up not doing that.  I think we had a busy day and we just read the verses.

9. John 13:6-9. Jesus washes his disciples feet. We washed each other's feet.

10. Exodus 12:12-14. The story of the Passover in the time of Moses.  I included this to help Aria connect what Jesus was celebrating with the disciples and the same sacrifice He made as the lamb was used for in the time of Moses.  Aria really likes the story of the plagues and knows it well.  I think she somewhat grasped the connection to Jesus, but it is definitely an idea to explore further.  We made a cotton ball sheep because they sacrificed a lamb and because Jesus is the Lamb of God.

11. Luke 22:14-20. The Last Supper.  Of course, this is the day that Aria told us she asked Jesus to live in her heart!  We ended up not baking bread together like I originally planned because we were celebrating Aria's faith!

12. Luke 23:46. Good Friday.  Jesus died on the cross.  We did an Easter unbasket this year.  I will post more about it later, but we wrote our sins on rocks and placed them in our basket.  I was amazed at Aria's sincerity with this activity.  She wrote sins she really struggles with.  It was wonderful symbolism.

13. Mark 15:42-47. Jesus' body was placed in a tomb.  We wrapped up our Jesus stick person in cloth and placed him in the garden tomb we made and closed it up.

14. Matthew 28:5-6.  Easter Sunday.  Jesus is alive! We made Resurrection rolls.  We discovered Jesus was not in the tomb.  We found all of our "sins" in Jesus' basket and blessings in our basket.  It was a great day!

15. John 20:10-18.  Mary sees Jesus near the tomb.  We planted some flowers as a sign of new life.

16. John 20:24-31.  Thomas doubts that Jesus is real.  We made holes we could put our fingers in like Thomas did to Jesus, only ours weren't in our skin.

17. John 21:4-6. Jesus eats fish with the disciples.  We ate some goldfish, too.  We were going to make a fish craft, but didn't have time.

18. Matthew 28:19-20.  The Great Commission.  We put stars on a world map of places where we donate money to help others learn about Jesus.

19. Acts 1:7-11. Jesus is taken to Heaven.  I found a really cool craft where you use a plastic cup and a piece of yarn to pull Jesus up into the clouds.  I didn't take a picture, but it turned out really cool!

20. Acts 2:1-4. The Holy Spirit comes as flames on the disciples' heads.  We made a picture of 11 faces to represent the disciples and tissue paper fire on their heads.